


Gold Like The Oldest Story

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Protectiveness, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael comes to visit James while James is filming his next movie. Maybe someone makes a proposal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gold Like The Oldest Story

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Eve 6’s “Good Lives”. Inspired by amai_kaminari over on LJ, and a news article relating the fact that James and Kerry Condon went around giving muffins and water to stranded passengers at Heathrow. The alternate title for this one would’ve been something from Dashboard Confessional’s “Hands Down,” which came on as I was writing: _hands down/ this is the best day I can ever remember/ I’ll always remember…_

Finding the soundstage had been easy. Michael had enough friends and contacts who’d been willing to point him in the right direction, and when he turned up at the gate, airplane-rumpled and carrying a single bag because he hadn’t paused anywhere along the way, the guard just smiled, welcomingly, and waved him through.  
   
“Thank you,” Michael said, and wandered around the backlot for a few minutes, past little knots of bored extras and assistant directors and lighting crews, before he found the stage he was looking for.  
   
When he stuck his head in the door, the first sound he heard, even over all the shouting of people and the rumbling of equipment—was that a wind machine?—was, of course, James laughing.  
   
He’d know that sound anywhere.  
   
He picked his way carefully around a camera crane, and followed the laughter to find James, standing in the middle of the set and talking animatedly to Rosario Dawson, both sleeves of his artistically disheveled suit rolled up so that those happy fingertips could make even larger gestures in the air.  
   
Rosario was smiling back at him, helplessly, watching the hands move. Michael could understand. He recognized the symptoms.  
   
Didn’t mean he was going to share, though. Especially not at the moment. At the moment he really just wanted James to smile in his direction, and let him wrap his own fingers around those expressive hands, and then kiss him until neither one of them could see straight.  
   
Maybe he should’ve stopped to shower. Or find a hotel room. Or come up with any sort of actual plan other than kissing James as soon as possible. He watched James demonstrate some sort of complicated motion with all ten fingers, and swung the bag in one hand, thoughtfully.  
   
At which point James glanced over and spotted him standing there, and even across the room Michael could see those blue eyes suddenly get brighter, sunrise over the welcoming ocean depths.  
   
James said something to Rosario, who laughed and waved him away, and then actually ran over to Michael’s side, all astonished grinning and delighted surprise, and Michael put both arms around him and kissed him, right there, because James had run and not walked across the room and was laughing and so deserved to be left absolutely breathless for all that impatience.  
   
“When did you get here? I thought you were in Venice! Or Italy! Or someplace else exotic and romantic!”  
   
“Just now. And Venice is part of Italy, you realize.”  
   
“Yes, thank you, I know.” James made a cheerful face at him, which prompted Michael to kiss him once more. “Mmm. I missed you. And apparently you missed me. Why are you here, though?”  
   
“You just said it. I missed you. Why is there blood on your face, by the way?”  
   
“It’s fake. Don’t worry. And don’t touch it; that took two people three hours to get right this morning and—”  
   
“Is that a fake bruise on your arm, too?”  
   
“Oh…no, that’s from yesterday. I might’ve fallen down some stairs.”  
   
 “You what?”  
   
“It was part of the scene! I had to!”  
   
“This is why we have stunt people, you know.”  
   
“Oh, come on, I can’t ask the stunt people to fall down the stairs for me. They might get hurt.”  
   
“James…” Michael just looked at him for a second, at all that wide-eyed and completely genuine concern over the welfare of the people paid to take the possible hurt in his place, and then gave up. “I love you, you know.”  
   
“And I love you. How long are you over here?”  
   
“As long as you want. Or as long as I need to convince your director to put extra padding in your wardrobe for this movie, too.”  
   
“You know, you do most of your own stunts, too. I’m starting to feel a little bit insulted.”  
   
“Yes, but I don’t end up with bruises every time someone so much as breathes in my direction—”  
   
“It’s not my fault! I just have pathetically weak skin!”  
   
“—and you can’t tell me that _that_ doesn’t hurt.”  
   
“Then I won’t. Because it does. And I love you even when you’re acting more overprotective than my grandmother.”  
   
“I love you even though you’ve just compared me to your grandmother.” Michael ran his thumb across the pale skin at the edge of the bruise, trying to make it go away just by touching, and James smiled, the warmth of it curling up into those bright eyes like a promise.  
   
“I’m glad you’re here.”  
   
“Me, too.” When he leaned forward to kiss that smile again, his foot bumped the bag, still sitting patiently where he’d dropped it on the ground. Right. He’d had a reason for coming, other than the desire to taste those glorious lips again, after all. “I brought you something.”  
   
James peeked inside, and then burst out laughing. “Muffins. And water. Oh, no, you read that article, didn’t you?”  
   
“It was a very good article.”  
   
“They made me sound like a candidate for sainthood, practically! And that was ages ago, I don’t know why we’re suddenly newsworthy. Anyway, it was just the nice thing to do.”  
   
“Exactly.”  
   
“But I didn’t—it really wasn’t that big a deal. You would have done it, too.”  
   
He probably would have, these days, yes. But he really wasn’t sure it would’ve occurred to him, before he’d met James. He’d never thought of himself as an uncaring person, but James managed to care about everyone. Even the ones he didn’t know. Even random bystanders, stranded in an airport.  
   
James cared about everyone always, Michael thought. And that made him an amazing actor, because he knew his characters inside and out, and loved them all, even the most flawed of them, the way he loved people for all their imperfections. Because James was that kind of person, someone who would throw himself down a flight of stairs if he thought that would save a stunt double from a single bruise, and then get up the next morning and do it all again, and Michael stood there watching him devour half a chocolate muffin in one bite, hair falling in his face and fake blood still painting his forehead, and thought, not for the first time, about how lucky he was.  
   
James looked up from finishing off the defenseless muffin, and smiled. “You look suspiciously pleased with yourself. Do I have chocolate on my nose?”  
   
“Actually, yes.” It made him look much younger and deliciously adorable and Michael wanted to lick it away and then remove all of that interfering clothing and continue tasting other places as well. Maybe no one would notice if he kidnapped James out of the middle of the film set for a few hours. Maybe James wouldn’t mind.  
   
“Better?”  
   
“Not at all.” At which James tried to look at his own nose, and ended up cross-eyed.  
   
Michael almost laughed, but instead put his hand into his pocket and pulled out the box that had been sitting there the whole time and held it out and said “I brought you something else, too.”  
   
James stared at him, eyes now as wide as all the oceans in the world, and Michael just kept talking, because the words weren’t right, weren’t eloquent or even planned out in advance, but they were there already, on the tip of his tongue, and he had to. “I meant to ask you this later, properly, and there would’ve been champagne and flowers and maybe violin music—”  
   
“Violin music?”  
   
“—but I think I have to ask you right now, and I love you so fucking much, always, I mean, I want to be with you always, and if you want me to I’ll buy  you icepacks for every single bruise you ever bring home, and kiss you every morning, every day, and will you marry me?”  
   
“Oh,” James said, “oh, my god, yes, fuck, of course yes, I love you, yes!” and Michael remembered how to breathe again and said “Really?”and James shouted “ _Yes_!” and then dove into his arms and kissed him, heedless of real bruises and fake blood and the random camera operators who had stopped to watch, the best kiss of their lives, the best kiss in the world.  
   
Someone applauded. Neither of them looked around.  
   
After a few eternities, Michael stopped to offer, “I could get down on one knee, if you want me to do this the more traditional way—” and James raised both eyebrows at him and said “Maybe later, I do like the idea of you on your knees, but no, give me that _right now_ ,” and plucked the box out of his hand.  
   
“I bought two. One for each of us. Obviously. If you don’t like them I can—”  
   
“Would you stop interrupting? I haven’t even seen them yet.” James flipped open the box, and Michael obediently shut his mouth, partly because James had asked but mostly because he had forgotten how to talk, watching the reflected gleam of metal in blue eyes.  
   
James still had chocolate on his nose, and the carefully applied fake blood was a total loss by now, and none of that mattered, because James was smiling, sunlight dancing across the ocean waves, and when James picked the simple white-gold curve out of the box and turned it around in his fingers, the ring rested against pale skin as if happy to be there.  
   
“Did you want to do this part, at least?” James held it out to him, and Michael breathed in and out and slid the ring over that graceful fingertip and down the irregular line of scattered freckles and into the place where it unquestionably belonged. James looked at his hand for a second, and then back up, at Michael’s by now probably desperate expression.  
   
“Perfect.”  
   
“Really?”  
   
“Entirely.”  
   
“I love you.”  
   
“I love you, too,” James told him, and then turned around to look at the increasing audience of cast and crew members, who, recognizing a good cue when they saw it, cheered wildly. “Are you planning to invite them all to the wedding? I think everyone here will kill you if you say no, you understand.”  
   
“Oh my god, we’re going to have a wedding.” Somehow that aspect of everything hadn’t actually occurred to him. The proposal, yes, being married to James, yes—that part had taken center stage in several of his most recent fantasies—but the fact of the wedding, not so much. He couldn’t even picture it. A church? Flowers? Decorations? Some sort of altar? No.  
   
James in a suit, however, he could picture. And that was definitely a good picture. James in a suit, at his side. The two of them, making vows to each other. Maybe he wouldn’t mind that part, after all.  
   
“We could always elope. Run away to some tropical island and come back an old married couple.” James grinned, and waved his newly-decorated hand at the crowd, which cheered again. Of course.  
   
James grinning like that, Michael thought, would make everyone want to cheer for them, which was probably going to be a good thing, considering that they were about to make front-page headlines, probably within fifteen minutes. He spent a contemplative second thinking about the various ramifications of what he’d just done, and then looked at James looking at the ring, and found absolutely zero room for regret.  
   
He could face anything, do anything, with James there beside him, after all.  
   
He thought about the requirements of an actual wedding again. He might be expected to dance. In public.  
   
“ _Can_ we elope?”  
   
“Probably not. You have met my grandmother, haven’t you?”  
   
“Can I at least run away with you right now for an hour or so?”  
   
“Definitely yes.” James scanned the crowd, spotted Rosario beaming at them, and shouted, “If anyone asks, something urgent came up, I’ll be back tomorrow!” and she gave him a thumbs-up sign, over the heads of half the production department.  
   
“Something urgent came up? Seriously?”  
   
“Not, in fact, a lie. You didn’t notice?”  
   
“Come here now.”  
   
This kiss lasted even longer, and prompted wolf whistles from the crowd. All right, then, Michael decided. A performance. He could handle that. Besides, he probably had some ground to make up in the romance department, after the terrible earlier lack of champagne and flowers and, for that matter, articulate sentences.  
   
So he waved, too, then put both arms around James, and, very literally, swept him off his feet.  
   
Their audience went crazy; some creatively quick-minded person trained the overhead lights on them, and someone else found the wind machine and sent artificial leaves billowing around his head, and James, in his arms, started laughing again, even harder after one of the leaves ended up stuck in his hair.  
   
“You’re fantastic. I’m not that light, you know, you can put me down now—”  
   
“You make me want to be. And no.” Not until after their appropriately triumphant exit, windblown and punctuated by the cheekily perfect sounds of someone’s iPod, proudly blaring Whitney Houston in their wake at a volume far higher than should have realistically been possible, and he set James on his feet outside the soundstage and left the leaf where it was, nestled into all that hair.  
   
“I love you,” James said again, still laughing, eyes sparkling up at him, and Michael thought about seeing that look every day for the rest of his life, and if he thought he’d been lucky before, he just hadn’t known what that word meant, because that expression, that smile, was the best thing he’d ever seen. Fake blood, leaf-adorned hair, and all.  
   
And James had said yes. He’d have that yes for the rest of his life, too.  
   
He whispered back, “I love you, too,” and James looked at him hopefully, probably expecting more kissing, so Michael very considerately leaned down and licked the tip of that nose and enjoyed the resulting expression of confusion.  
   
“What—”  
   
“You taste like chocolate.”  
   
“You remember that urgent thing we were discussing? More so now.”  
   
“I’m so glad I get to marry you.” Still not eloquent. But, also, exactly how he felt.  
   
The sunlight bounced gleefully off the gold of the ring, scattering giddy bits of afternoon light around them in the dusty studio backlot, and James grinned up at him, and said, “Me, too.”


End file.
